Law Professor Charlie Trost was awarded the Paul J. Hartman Memorial State and Local Tax Forum Award for his outstanding contributions and dedicated service to the field of state and local tax law. Trost is the author and editor of the treatise, Federal Limitations on State and Local Taxation, 2d. He is recognized as a distinguished State and Local Tax (“SALT”) practitioner and serves as a Life Member and a former Treasurer of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.
He is a former Commissioner of Revenue for the State of Tennessee and a Founding Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel. In 2016, Trost was named one of the top ten State Tax practitioners in the country. He is of Counsel with the Nashville law firm Waller Lansden, where he has been a member and partner since 1981.
The Paul J. Hartman State & Local Tax Forum was established in 1993 in Nashville, Tennessee. Since that time, the Board of Trustees and Advisory Board have worked together to provide industry, practitioners and state revenue employees the opportunity to participate in a quality forum exploring significant national developments and trends in state and local taxation. Trost is only the third recipient of this award.
Event organizer and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Education Dr. Danielle Garrett said the Department hosted the event as a way to highlight the continued underrepresentation of women in the physical sciences, make physical science more relatable and accessible to students and heighten publicity of Belmont’s science programs. Citing research that shows women receive more than 50% of bachelor’s degrees in biological sciences but only 39% in physical sciences (and the number decreases when considering chemistry and physics), Garrett and the rest of the Department’s STEM Outreach Committee are committed to emphasizing the importance of women in STEM fields.
Steve Mauldin, an adjunct music technology instructor in the School of Music, was recently honored by the Gospel Music Association with the Dove Award, their highest honor, for his work on For the Sake the Love. The religious musical was recognized in the “Best Musical/Choral Collection of the Year” category and was created by Lee Black, Camp Kirkland, Cliff Durren, Phil Nitz and Mauldin.
A group of Bridges to Belmont scholars volunteered at the Edgehill Halloween Family Night last week where they passed out candy, facilitated a face-painting booth and assisted with judging costume competitions. Brenda Morrow, the director of the Edgehill Family Resource Center, facilitates the Edgehill Halloween Family Night each year. Nearly 200 children attended the annual event.
Student Emilee Filspart spent the long weekend in Birmingham, Alabama serving one of Belmont ministry partners, Urban Ministry. While there, the team painted the house of a woman who became a dear friend. “She was so appreciative of our generosity,” Filspart said. “She told us that as a young couple, she and her husband did service work and she felt like things had come full circle.”
Junior 
Sarah O’Hanlon was recently awarded a scholarship from Smart Choice Sitters. Smart Choice Sitters connects families to babysitters through an online database. All of their sitters are college students who are recent graduates who have earned at least a 3.0 GPA. This scholarship is awarded each semester to one student who, according to CEO Kyle Willkom, “goes above and beyond, and gets a 5-star review from a [participating] parent.” O’Hanlon was the first-ever recipient of this scholarship, and Willkom said, “We’re hoping to give…to more Belmont students in future semesters!”